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Audio Editing and Element Timings

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Ryan Anderson

Started a topic Mon, 21 Sep, 2015 at 4:14 PM

Having spent hours... and hours putting together my first Scribe, I
recorded the audio that I wanted to combine with a backing track in
Videoscribe. My heart sank. I wasn't aware just how awkward the editing
part of this is. I know the latest version (2.3) is supposed to have an
improved timeline, but I can see any difference.

Here are some things that would make VS so amazingly better:

The ability to edit audio IN VS, rather than, say, Audacity

Of course, Audacity is great, so even if the audio (voice) track
is recorded in Audacity, I now need to work out how to time all of the
graphic changes (drawing time, pause and transition time) in VS in
conjunction with Audacity. I have 20 "slides" (for lack of a better
term), and not being able to have a pop-out that gives you info for a
selection from the timeline, or the ability to click through
segments/slides, rather than holding the button or finding the image on
the canvas is quite frustrating. I have between 100 and 200 elements on
the canvas, so being able to have a much more detailed
timeline/multi-track system is, I think, a must for VS going forward

Other video/audio editing software includes the ability to very
simply add "silence" and shorten track elements through dragging as well
as setting the time. It would be great if VS let you align graphic
elements with audio elements on multiple tracks. For example, If "scene
one" is 30 seconds long through the VS defaults, and I need to go into
each element to adjust them to match what the audio says (with no
overall timeline/counter showing for the whole Scribe, which would be a
great addition, BTW), it's very awkward. The audio is 16 seconds long,
so, among a host of potentially great editing options would be to have
VS match the time/length of each "slide" to a selection of audio on a
track, thereby "squeezing" the drawing to fit with each selection of
audio.

I love VideoScribe. But it just seems like it falls short of glory it
could (should?) otherwise have if you integrated some basic audio/slide
editing functions into the one package rather than the gymnastics that
is required for anything half complicated.

The silver lining is that this difficulty actually brought about a creative idea that'll take my Scribes in a different direction - necessity is the moth of invention, and all that. :)

2 people like this idea

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Shalisha Alston

On Mon, 19 Oct, 2015 at 5:52 PM

Hi Ryan. Please correct me if I'm mistaken. It sounds like you did your scribe before you did your recording. If so, that makes it more difficult. Always do your recording first, then make your scribe fit the recording.

When I do my voiceover, I have to do many "takes" because I make mistakes. However, once it's perfect, I upload it to audacity and simply snip out what I don't want. But it's usually near perfect, so I don't end up having to edit it.

I use a professional mic from Amazon and use the record button from off my computer and talk away. It takes a lot of rehearsals before I get it perfect, but I'd rather do that than have to do a lot of editing.